Here I will post some short pieces on Sarala Mahabharata. Sarala Das is known as the "aadikavi" (the first poet) of Oriya Literature. He lived and wrote in the 15th Century. Mahabharat is his magnum opus. The episodes in Sarala's Mahabharat are significantly different from those in Vyasa's (Sanskrit) Mahabharat.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

WHY DID KARNA WANT TO KILL ARJUNA

when in Sarala’s narrative he
knew right from his childhood that he was his brother? Why was he so focused on killing him? In the Kurukshetra War brothers didn’t kill brothers; cousins were the targets. Incidentally in Vyasa
Mahabharata too Karna was no less determined to kill Arjuna. It is just
that he got to know of his relationship with him in this narrative much later,
but still before the War. As is well known, in Vyasa’s version, Arjuna had
always been Karna’s target. He hated him. Things had already become far too
complicated before he knew that Arjuna was his brother.

In any case, in Sarala Mahabharata Karna’s story is rather
different. When they were all small, Kunti herself had introduced her sons to
him and told him that they were his younger brothers. She made them prostrate
at his feet as younger brothers should do to their eldest brother. Karna was
upset that Kunti had given the status of her eldest son to Yudhisthira knowing
that he was her second son. The hurt child told his mother that now he would
get back his status as her eldest only after killing Yudhisthira. Kunti was distressed
and disappointed and left with her three sons (Nakula and Sahadeva were not
born yet) but no harsh word was said to Karna by anybody. In any case Arjuna
did not figure at all in that exchange between the mother and her eldest son.

Later, Karna, the Pandavas and
the Kauravas became guru Drona’s pupils. So was Drona’s son, Aswasthama. King
Drupad had sent his sons, Dhristadyumna and Shikhandi (after she became male by
the grace of a Yaksa), to Drona for their education. At that time there was no
rivalry between Karna and Arjuna. The rivalry, which was really one-sided, was
between Aswasthama and Arjuna. Aswasthama was jealous of Arjuna and he resented
it strongly that his father imparted knowledge of some very special divine
weapons to Arjuna alone. Incidentally Drona had never said that he would make
Arjuna the greatest archer, nor had Arjuna ever sought or even expected such a
commitment from him.

In Sarala Mahabharata there was no situation – there couldn’t simply be
- where Karna was humiliated or discriminated against on account of his caste
because everyone knew that he was Kunti’s son. True, he was called “Sutaputra” (roughly,
son of a charioteer) but that was because he was brought up by a Suta. He went
to Draupadi’s swayambara to win the princess, not for himself, but for
Duryodhana and participated in the archery test but failed to hit the target.
He was not a party to Draupadi’s humiliation in the Kaurava court. He had no
role at all in the first or the second game of dice and the subsequent exile of
the Pandavas. He neither encouraged nor discouraged Duryodhana to fight a
conclusive war against the Pandavas. He did not play any role in the
deliberations when Krishna came to the Kaurava court as Yudhisthira’s emissary.
Before the Kurukshetra War, there were battles he had fought against Arjuna and
there were battles too when they had fought together against their enemies. But
there was never any particular hostility or jealousy, let alone enmity, between
them. In fact in the narrative the only example of such lingering enmity fed on
intense hatred from time to time was between Bhima and Duryodhana. Karna wished
for the Pandavas’ victory in the War and for Yudhisthira to be the king. But he
had no intentions of making things easy for him in this respect.

It was another matter that
circumstances arose which forced him to do precisely that. On the eve of the
War Kunti extracted a promise from him that he would not kill Yudhisthira,
Bhima, Nakula and Sahadeva. She said she would accept it if he killed Arjuna or
Arjuna killed him. This was not a commitment about which he ever told
Duryodhana. He honoured it in the battlefield. Although during the War, when he
was the Commander-in-Chief of the Kaurava army, he defeated each of the four
and could have easily killed them, he did not. The War might have taken a
different turn, or at least the situation could have been notably different,
had he killed them or even any of them. In any case, his promise to his mother
severely narrowed his option in the War; he had to focus on Arjuna and Arjuna
alone. He must have persuaded himself, at least after giving his word to his
mother, that Arjuna’s death would decide the War against the Pandavas.

But wasn’t he focussed on Arjuna
even before his mother extracted that promise from him? Didn’t he collect
divine weapons to kill Arjuna specifically? As far as I can recollect (the text
is not with me right now) it was not really so in Sarala Mahabharata. However, granted for the sake of argument that
it was indeed so; is there anything surprising? On the Pandava side only Arjuna
had divine weapons. Karna being an honourable man, would he have attacked his
other four brothers or Drupada and his sons or Virata and his sons with divine
weapons? The only one he could have used them against was Arjuna!

He was committed to Duryodhana.
They were friends from childhood. As mentioned earlier, Kunti’s visit to him
when she told him that he was her eldest born and introduced her sons to him
did not end in a pleasant note and in any case it was a bit too late for
forging emotional bonds between him and his brothers. He did not grow up with
them. His mother did not take him with her but left him in Radha’s house when
she went back after that visit. When Duryodhana became king, he became one of
his key advisers. When he went to war against the Pandavas, Karna knew that he
depended on him. Karna was an honest person, a virtuous person. He fought most
sincerely for his friend to win.

2 comments:

Hi, This blog is really interesting. Is there an english version of the sarala mahabharata which I can read.

I am particularly stuck by certain things in your posts. Earlier you had written about Sakuni's revenge and also wondered why Duryodhana continued to trust him, against everybody's warnings, and when he knew well enough that he had done him a great wrong and he would possibly want revenge. In this post again, you talk about how everyone always seemed to know Karna was Kunti's son, and Karna had openly blessed Yudhishtra with victory before the war. Duryodhana presumably knew this. WHy then did he trust him so much. If Karna was never insulted in any competition for being a charioteer, where did the friendship between the two originate. Was it simply because Karna grew up in Hastinapura when Duryodhana was young and therefore had a chance to become Duryodhana's friend before he met his blood brothers. I think in the canonical version, Karna is driven not so much by friendship as by gratitude towards Duryodhana. If there was no context for Duryodhana supporting him in distress, was there any gratitude at all. And if it was simple friendship, why then did Karna not stop or move away from Duryodhana when he did some really bad things like the Lac house, where his own mother and brothers were meant to be killed. And was Karna ever declared Angraaj, or was he simply Duryodhana's advisor.

Thanks for your very interesting comment. Sarala Mahabharata has not been translated into English. I can send you some more material on Sarala Mahabharata if you give me your email id.As for my response to your comment, I will need some time. I am going for a short lecture tour tomorrow and am working on a few urgent assignments. I will be able to write my response only towards the end of the month. It will be in the form of a post in this blog.